Using the Segment Builder in ActiveCampaign

June 16, 2017

In this guide, learn how our segment builder makes it as easy as possible for you to perform incredibly meaningful segmentation on the spot, whether you're managing lists, in your contact database, creating a campaign, or building an automation.

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Our segment builder is one functionality that truly sets ActiveCampaign apart. In other platforms, the segment builder lives in one place and can only be accessed there. But in ActiveCampaign, our segment builder is a floating feature that allows you to create “segments on the fly” from several different places within the platform.

In this guide, you will learn how to leverage global data in our segment builder to create super-targeted communications. You will also learn how to access the segment builder from anywhere in the platform you might need segmentation to enhance a marketing function.

Using Global Data in Segmentation

There is a lot of global data automatically stored in ActiveCampaign that you may not be aware of. In our platform, you can you have access to the following data:

Contact Details, including Email, First Name, Last Name, Full Name, Phone, Organization, Date Subscribed, Time Subscribed, IP Address, Tag, and Total Conversion Value

Custom Fields – any custom fields you create

Actions, including Has clicked on a link, Has not click on a link, Has opened, Has not opened, Has shared socially, Has forwarded, Has not forwarded, Has replied, Has not replied, In list, Not in list, and Subscribed with subscription form

Geography, including Country, State, City, Zip and Area code

Site & Event Data, including Has visited, Has not visited, Was referred from, Visiting device, Total page visits, and Total site visits

Deals, including Has deal with status, Has deal in stage, Has deal with value, Has deal assigned to, Has total number of deals, Has total number of open deals, Has total number of lost deals, Has total number of won deals, and Has deal with title

Attribution, including Has source, Does not have source, Has medium, Does not have medium, Has campaign, Does not have campaign, Has term, Does not have term, Has content, and Does not have content

Not only can you track this data, you can also use it to segment your contacts. In ActiveCampaign, you can actually segment your contacts based on their behavior, using data such as that found in the Action options category of the segment builder:

Some marketers habitually tag all of these actions when they happen because they’re not used to working in a platform that tracks this data. Since ActiveCampaign keeps track of your link clicks and email opens across every email in your account, you no longer have to obsess over tracking link clicks by applying a tag.

But that’s not all, as an ActiveCampaign user you also have access to data captured from your web assets and third-party tools. This can be used to perform even more meaningful segmentation based on contacts’ behavior.

For example, let’s say you have a sales page: YourBusiness.com/salespage. You can use ActiveCampaign’s site tracking feature to track how often contacts in your database visit your sales page.

Thus, you don’t have to rely on overly complicated analytics tools to track which contacts have visited your sales page. Instead, you can count on the data we automatically capture for you, and save yourself the time, effort, and risk of human error.

Working in a platform that can track activity within the application, as well as across all your web assets and third-party tools, allows you to take full advantage of the greatest benefit of segmentation: the ability to scale personalization.

Creating Segments On The Fly

It is our firm belief that every form of communication you send should be targeted and highly personalized. That’s why we make it as easy as possible for you to use segmentation in your marketing processes, no matter where you are in the platform. Our segment builder is a floating feature, accessible in a few different areas of the platform:

In Lists

Lists are intended to represent a broad spectrum of contacts that have primarily one main interest in common. You may at times want to further segment a list based on sub-interests represented by tags and custom fields.

To do this, you would click the arrow button next to “Import Contacts” on the left side of the list you would like to segment. Select “Segments” from the drop down menu, then click on the New Segment button.

After you create a new segment here, it will then be available for you to choose when you decide to send your next campaign.

In Contacts

From there, you can use the segment builder to filter your contact database by condition. Click the Add New Segment Group button to filter by more than one condition. When you’re finished setting your segment conditions, click the Search button to view your segmented list of contacts.

Clicking on the search field again will allow you to return to the advanced search portion of the segment builder. You will notice below your defined criteria you have two options to save your segment:

Save as Segment

Save as Saved Search

Saving as a segment will make your new segment accessible across all lists on your account. Saved searches, however, are only available within the contact segment builder.

In Campaigns

If you’re creating a new campaign and need to send the email to a specific segment of your contacts, rather than going to find the segment builder in Lists or Contacts, you can do this straight from Campaigns as you create your email.

Start by creating a new campaign. Select the green New Campaign button, type in a name for your campaign and select the type of campaign you’d like to create.

Click the green Next button at the top right to advance to the “Select List(s) step. Here, all of your contact lists will populate. Check the box(es) next to the list or lists you’d like to send your campaign to. Once you make your list selection, the option to “Select a segment” will appear. You can select a segment you previously created from the dropdown menu, or use the Create New button to work from scratch in the segment builder:

Conditional content

You can also access the segment builder within emails for conditional content. Conditional content includes text boxes, videos, photos and buttons.

Click on the gear icon that appears when you have a content block selected. Choose “Make conditional” to access an abbreviated version of the email builder.

In Automations

You can access the segment builder in Automations as well. When you begin a new automation, there are more than 20 different start triggers to choose from. Start triggers determine how contacts will enter an automation. In your automation, click “Add new start” to see all of ActiveCampaign’s start trigger options.

You can access the segment builder from any of the starred start triggers below:

When you choose a start trigger, you typically have two conditions to set: which specific trigger asset to use, and how many times the automation will run. For example, for the Submits a form trigger, you choose:

Select form: Do you want submissions of a specific form to trigger this automation, or do you want the automation to begin when a contact fills out any of your forms?

Runs: Will this automation run “Once”, or “Multiple Times”?

There is also an option to use the segment builder to determine a third condition required to enter the automation. You can find this option in the Action options window under “Advanced”. Select the checkbox next to “Segment the contacts entering this automation” to access the segment builder:

Actions

You can also access the segment builder when adding the following actions to an automation:

Wait (until specific conditions are met)

If / Else

Goal

Click the plus sign in your automation to add a new action. You can find all three of these actions in the Conditions and Workflow category:

To access the segment builder with the Wait action, select “Wait” in Conditions and Workflow, then select the “Until specific conditions are met” option.

To access the segment builder with the If / Else action, simply select “If / Else” in Conditions and Workflow:

To access the segment builder with the Goal action, select “Goal” in Conditions and Workflow. Type in a name for your goal, then “Click to add a goal” to set your goal conditions in the segment builder.

Summary

Our segment builder was designed to make the data you need to execute highly targeted marketing functions as accessible as possible.

You can use the global data we automatically capture for you to segment based on the actions your contacts take when they interact with your emails or your other web assets outside of ActiveCampaign.

You can also access the segment builder from the Lists, Contacts, Campaigns and Automations sections in our platform to segment “on the fly” as the need arises.

Have you used the segment builder in ActiveCampaign yet? Let us know in the comments below!

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